Base Class: Monk
Millenia ago, in the early days of what would be the Shou empire, the Immortal Dragons descended from heaven in human form, to lead mortals as the first monarchs of Shou Lung. Each of them, during their reign, taught the mortals one of the nine heavenly virtues: compassion, bravery, literacy, tradition, industry, love, justice, prosperity and artifice. In their wisdom, however, they predicted that their principles would be abandoned or corrupted by the fallible humans after they left the world, and in order to preserve these ideals they selected a few virtuous men and established a monastic order to champion their cause. The headquarters of this order would be the Temple of the Immortal Dragons, located at a mountain top in a mystical island. There, the Immortal Dragons taught the monks the secret to channel their inner chi into radiant energy, just like dragons harness their energy into their breath. In order to protect their champions from their worldly foes, the Dragons made the island unreachable, except when the path to the mortal world is open, for one month - a lunar cycle - every nine years. During its abscence, the monks of Mount Penglai spend each year studying and meditating over one of the nine heavenly virtues, and after each cycle they visit and observe the mortal world to check if their interference is needed to promote and maintain peace and order.
Dragon Fist
At the 3rd level, when you hit a creature with an unarmed attack you can spend a focus point to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the martial arts bludgeon damage. This extra damage is 2d8, for a cost of 1 focus point spent. You can increase the damage at higher levels, raising it by 1d8 for each extra focus point spent, to a maximum damage of 5d8. This damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or fiend, to a maximum damage of 6d8. The maximum number of focus points a monk can spend with this power is shown in the table below:
monk level maximum focus points damage dealt*
3-5 1 2d8
6-8 2 3d8
9-11 3 4d8
12+ 4 5d8
* add 1d8 if the enemy is a fiend or undead
Healing Touch
At 6th level, you channel your focus to heal wounds. As a bonus action, you can touch a creature (which could be yourself) and spend focus points to restore its hit points. You can heal 5 hit points for each focus point spent. Alternatively, you can spend 1 focus point to remove the poisoned condition from a touched creature; this use of this feature doesn't also restore hit points to the creature.
Chosen Weapon
At 11th level, you gain proficiency with a "chosen weapon". This weapon can be any melee or ranged weapon, simple or martial, that lacks the "heavy" property. The glaive is also a valid choice. A chosen weapon is considered a monk's weapon to all purposes. As an alternative, you can choose any of the traditional monk weapons to be your "chosen weapon". In addition, you gain the ability to augment your chosen weapon's efficiency with your focus. As a bonus action, you can expend 4 focus points to imbue your chosen weapon with radiant energy. For one minute or until you use this feature again, your weapon deals an extra 1d8 radiant damage. This damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or fiend, for a total of 2d8 extra radiant damage against such creatures.
Deceive the Mind
Beginning at the 17th level, you can spend your focus points to cast spells from the schools of illusion and enchantment (charm spells). By connecting your focus with a target you can access and manipulate its mind, both by exerting a more direct influence or by inserting in its mind what you want it to see, experience or feel. To cast one of these spells you use its casting time and other rules, but you don't need material components for it. To cast a spell a monk must spend its level plus one focus points. If the spell has an increased effect, you can enhance its level by 1 for each additional focus point you spend. The maximum number of focus points you can spend to cast a spell this way (including its base focus point cost and any additional points you spend to increase its level) is six, to a maximum spell level of 5. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability.
Previous Versions
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Posted Oct 12, 2025In response to Collinweeks' observations, I have considered two possibilities:
1) allowing melee chosen weapons to benefit from the "flurry of blows"; and
2) increasing the base chosen weapon damage to 2d8 / 3d8 vs. undead & fiends.
Both would be too much, in my opinion. Besides, in my first musings I forgot to mention that, if you still have focus points available, even when you are attacking with your melee chosen weapon you can use the "flurry" with unarmed strikes, and possibly employ the 3rd level "dragon fist" ability in the same turn. So, the cost of 4 focus points would be worthwhile after some rounds.
However, since the damage I originally determined was lower than the base "dragon fist" damage, it would take a good number of rounds for the cost of 4 focus points to be advantageous, and maybe until then the combat was already over, as pointed out by Collinweeks. Furthermore, we must also consider that in the case of ranged chosen weapons the advantage is firing from afar, and it would impede to combine this attack with the unarmed "flurry".
So, I decided that the best solution would be simply raising the "chosen weapon" feature damage, making clear that it can be combined with the unarmed "flurry of blows" and "dragon fist" features, if the monk has enough focus points. This way, a monk with a ranged chosen weapon deals a bit more of damage from a safe distance, while those who employ a melee chosen weapon deal the same damage of the base "dragon fist" damage, with the cost of 4 focus points being "paid" after the four first hits in up to 10 turns. It is right that the "chosen weapon" feature damage is not increased by apllying more focus points, but its duration compensates for that, and depending on the chosen weapon the monk deals a different damage type. Finally, and to make the monk morte versatile, I decided to add one more flick to the "chosen weapon" feature: whenever you take a long rest you can replace it with another weapon type.
Those are significant changes, and so I will create a new version of the subclass. Thank you Collinweeks for your comments, and I hope you and all who use the subclass enjoy it even more, after such adjustments.
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Posted Oct 8, 2025I confess I was resisting the idea of using the "flurry of blows" feature with weapons (the feature gives three extra attacks at this level). Ranged weapons already give you a great advantage (they allow you to deal the martial arts damage from afar), but melee weapons end up not being very different from unarmed strikes, since range and damage tend to be the same (but damage type can change).
If I allow the "flurry" with weapons - or at least with melee weapons, to give them a tactical advantage over ranged weapons -, you must carefully consider if the cost can be lowered that much, for although the damage bonus in this feature is lower, the number of attacks would be more than double, for the same duration (rising from 2 to 5). As it lasts for one minute, maybe it could be too powerful if combat somehow perdures... I will ponder on your suggestions, thank you for them.
Note: Just to bring in consideration, with the same number of Focus Points you use to deal 8d8, you deal 12d8 if the enemy is an undead or fiend if you are unarmed, but 16d8 with your Chosen Weapon (in a longer number of turns).
One solution, instead of lowering the cost, could be increasing the damage to 2d8 (3d8 vs. undeads and fiends). I'll do the math. Besides, I don't think lessening the duration is a good option, for a minute is a game standard, as is a turn.
Finally, if your Chosen Weapon is a ranged one, it could be deadly if you adopt a "hit and run" strategy, even without the "flurry" for such weapons.
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Posted Oct 8, 2025The 11th level feature seems to be largely just worse than just using the smite feature in 99% of situations. Maybe if you really need a ranged weapon and absolutely can't be melee, but using 4 focus points to enhance damage will give you 8d8 additional damage and you only need to hit 4 times to get that damage, which can happen easily in 1 round, and it doesn't cost a bonus action. the lvl 11 feature requires a bonus action and requires you to hit 8 times to get 8d8 additional damage, which at minimum is going to be over 4 rounds bc it can only be from the weapon attacks, at which point combat is usually over, so if you missed even 1 time you're likely out more FP than you should have been. I'd only make it cost *maybe* 2 FP, and I'd allow you to replace any martial arts or flurry attacks with weapon attacks instead. That would make it an actually useful feature where you need to carefully consider what's worth using
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Posted Mar 12, 2025Although there are a lot of versions here, many are just for correcting format, typos, or snippet texts. There are actually only three different versions: in the first one, the "lay on hands" feature works like the paladin's ability, and the "chosen weapon" feature turns the weapon temporarily magical. In the second version, the "chosen weapon" power changed to give the weapon extra radiant damage for its duration. In the third and final version (the one I recommend), the "lay on hands" was changed to have a cost in focus points, being renamed as "healing touch". Such changes were made considering game balance and also to bring the subclass closer to the 2024 version of the Monk.
So, these are the definitive versions of each variety:
1st variety: use version 1.1 (mod. 02/07/25)
2nd variety: use version 1.5 (mod. 03/05/25)
3rd variety: use version 3.5 (current version)